Successful places provide the setting for a diverse range of social, cultural and economic activity, and enable sustainable living, community identity and wellbeing. They are adaptable and regenerative.
Delivery
Our approach to placemaking sets our planning and design services within an understanding of the broad range of forces and factors that help to shape places. These include societal mega-trends, the inherent assets of places, demographics and the economy, investment criteria and market perceptions. We develop placemaking approaches and strategies that respond to and influence these.
We get under the skin of what is important in a project, for all involved, analysing the social value that can be brought to each individual project.
Space
We apply our placemaking experience and skills at a variety of scales, including individual sites, town and city centres, neighbourhoods and at the strategic level.
Clients
We undertake placemaking-led work for clients in the public, private and community sectors. This includes local authorities, housing associations/companies, landowners, developers and house builders as well as community development trusts and organisations.
Collaboration
We have enjoyed being a multi-disciplinary practice for over 25 years. Our planners, designers and architects have learnt, explored and developed skills as individuals but also as a collective, which brings a thorough and passionate approach to our work. Combined with our heritage expertise, we have the ability to unpick some of the trickiest and most sensitive of projects.
We advocate collaboration and drive this throughout the process so there is buy in from all those connected to the project, ensuring the best can come from it.
Urban design
Urban design is the design of towns and cities, streets and spaces. It is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative process which seeks to shape the physical backdrop for life – it’s “the art of making places”. At Nash Partnership, economic, social and environmental considerations are integral to our urban design approach.
Our urban design work includes:
- Masterplanning. A masterplan is an overarching planning document and spatial layout which is used to structure land use and development. Working with stakeholders and developers, we produce residential and mixed-use masterplans to a range of scales and densities, in rural and urban locations.
- Writing and implementing design codes. A design code is a set of simple, concise, illustrated requirements that are visual and numerical to provide detailed parameters for the physical development of a site, buildings or neighbourhood. We have produced design codes for public sector clients, providing them with the structure and benchmarks to assess the quality of development. We also work with developer clients to deliver sites that have been coded, balancing design quality with delivery understanding.
- Public realm design. This considers the character and function of spaces between buildings for people and the environment. Our town centre work considers healthy streets and high street viability, movement and environmental design.
- Strategic site assessments. An assessment is where we combine our management, planning and design skills to suggest an appropriate development approach. Using GIS-based mapping and other assessment tools we can support developers and landowners with options appraisals and planning strategies towards the strategic use of land.
Regeneration
Regeneration is about bringing energy, life, activity, human wellbeing and bio-diversity back to places. Ultimately it is people that create successful places and communities. The built environment has a fundamental role in enabling this. Very often regeneration is about establishing a new dynamic by doing the right thing, in the right place at the right time.
We understand what has shaped places to be as they currently are, and why and how neighbourhoods, towns, cities and regions go through cycles of economic and environmental decline. We show the steps they need to take to become vibrant and impact-accountable communities again.
Our regeneration work includes:
- Neighbourhoods and estate regeneration. Engaging with existing communities, we appraise the benefits of regeneration versus refurbishment considering land use, housing quality, embodied carbon and placemaking. Thinking about costs, phasing, decants, and impact on local people, we provide deliverable and attractive solutions.
- Brownfield sites and mixed-use development. These range from small scale infill projects, often in sensitive locations, to high density urban sites, providing a mix of uses. Biodiversity net gain can be a challenge on brownfield sites, with we integrate into our placemaking and architectural solutions.
- Sensitive heritage assets. Heritage-focused placemaking can pay huge dividends when it comes to driving local regeneration, resulting in significant benefits for the local economy and community. Working with our expert conservation colleagues, we have the technical skills to bring older buildings back into use as well as creating new communities around them.
- High streets, town and city centres. We work with local people and stakeholders to reimage areas of public realm, review the viability of highstreets and look at the bigger picture, creating a town or city wide regeneration strategies.
Consultation and engagement
We’re really good at listening.
Some of our most successful and enduring projects have involved working with existing communities, enabling them to influence the future of the neighbourhood in which they live. Our engagement activities are tailored to the people and places where we work, giving local people the tools they need to be involved. We go out of our way to build trust with hard-to-reach groups such as younger people. Our aim is for people to feel involved, take ownership and pride in the outcomes.
To achieve this, our methodology could include any or all of the following:
- Digital, interactive engagement
- ‘Planning for Real’ workshops
- Working with local schools, youth or specialist groups
- Pop-up events, moving around a neighbourhood to be more accessible
- Taking part in community events such as local festivals
- Providing training and work experience within the practice
Working with us
We care about what we do. We have a responsibility to do the right things, considering the climate emergency, energy crisis, and biodiversity issues that we all face. Creating ‘places’ with an ability to thrive, and for people to invest in is the fundamental starting point to help move us towards diverse, well, and clean environments.